ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what motivated Eduard Suess to encompass geological and monetary notions of gold stocks in one and the same study. It focuses on how did Suess's opponents respond to the geologist's attempt to link the planetary and the societal scale and discusses global mineral resource consumption and predicted scarcity amid growth-oriented international monetary politics. Problems of scaling and commensuration in the earth sciences have been troubling environmental historians and historians of science alike for a while now. In mineral resource estimates, economic and geological notions of mineral stocks or mineral depots/deposits are offset against each other. Mineral resource appraisals started out as local or regional endeavors. Geologists examined the underground assets of a particular mine in order to predict the size, quality, and duration of its commodity production or determine the selling price of the operation at a given time. When predicting the disappearance of global monetary gold, Suess anticipated the logics of some early mineral resource economists.
